About ad customizers

Ad customizers adapt your text ads to what someone is searching for, which device she's using, where he’s located, or even the date, time of day, or day of the week. They can insert a price, the time left before a sale ends, and any other text that you define. For example, a line of text that says "Prices starting as low as ____!" could be filled in with the right sale price—and that's just the beginning.

Benefits

Tailored messaging: Ads are hyper-specialized to each search or webpage being viewed.

Scalability: Customizers let a single text ad have hundreds of variations, and show the most relevant variation to each potential customer.

Reporting: The automatic updates that happen when an ad is triggered don't reset the ad's performance data.

How they work

You can include ad customizers anywhere in your text ad except in the final URL field. These ads only show on the Search Network.

Ad customizers are parameters that go within braces {like this}. The parameter gets replaced by dynamic text when your ad is triggered by a user's search.

Customizers fill in your ad text using ad customizer data that you upload to Google Ads in a spreadsheet file. Customizers reference the name of the data set, as well as an attribute it includes. Learn more

With customizers, you can also provide a default value in the event your ad customizer does not show or the text exceeds the character limit.

Customizer data can include anything you like

Customizers work like the keyword insertion feature, which uses the {keyword:default text} parameter to put the keyword used for targeting into your ad text. Ad customizers can insert any type of text at all.

Are you running a sale? Customizers can display certain discounts with certain products, for sales that change periodically, or that are limited to a specific time period.

Are you managing a large inventory? Customizers can use brand-related keywords to display specific details about the product someone's looking for.

Do you sell your products in multiple cities and regions? Customizers can use someone’s physical location (or the location they’re interested in) to show location-specific pricing, product availability, or calls to action.

When you use customizers well, they give people confidence that you have what they're looking for, as well as an incentive to buy it from you.

Examples

Using target keywords lets your ad include more details about what potential customers are looking for. This method tends to work well for advertisers with a large inventory whose product details are a strong selling point.

Example

Scott's kitchen supply store offers hundreds of different stand mixers. He wants his ads to show details for each model, along with the current sale price he's offering.

Ad customizers let him offer these details for all of his mixers, with only one ad. All he needs to do is upload ad customizer data with the details associated with each mixer. A line from this ad customizer spreadsheet might look like this:

Target keyword

Model (text)

Capacity (number)

Type (text)

Start_price (price)

Sale_ends (date)

prowhip 300

ProWhip 300

5

tilt-head

$199

2015/05/15 20:00:00

The "Target keyword" column shows what keyword should trigger the details in the other columns, each of which specify what type of details they include (text, number, and so on).

When Scott writes his ad, he uses customizers that reference each column in place of specific details. The first part of the customizer ("Mixers") is the name he gave to his data set, and the second part (for example, "Model") is the name of a column.

Example

Scott's account is organized such that each campaign is focused on one category of appliances (e.g., stand mixers, blenders, and bread machines), with one ad group per brand. He finds that when people look for a particular model, they often end up buying a different model within the same brand, so he wants to highlight his large selection for specific brands. To do this, he needs to customize his ads by ad group and use the "Target campaign" and "Target ad group" columns. Here's an example line from his ad customizer data:

If you sell products in different cities, or if you have multiple store locations, you can use customizers to update the details on your ad based on someone’s physical location or the location they’re interested in.

Example

Scott now runs a chain of kitchen supply stores throughout the United States. He wants his ads to highlight discounts offered in his stores that people are near.

Ad customizers let him offer location-specific information using only one ad. All he needs to do is upload ad customizer data with the details associated with each location. A line from this ad customizer spreadsheet might look like this:

Target location

Brand (text)

Sale (text)

Denver, Colorado

ProWhip

20% off mixers in our Denver store.

United States

ProWhip

Best price guaranteed.

The ad text he enters might look like this:{=Mixers.Brand} Stand Mixer
www.example.com{=Mixers.Sale}.
Find the right mixer for you!

Now, if someone searches for "prowhip denver,” they may see an ad like this: